Does Race Have A Place in Fantasy?

Today I finally managed to see Prince Caspian a couple of weeks after its release and, generally speaking, I was impressed. It shows an improvement from The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe and considering how much I enjoyed that film this was no mean feat. It wasn't perfect of course; I particularly disliked the Caspian/Susan romantic subplot, and still maintain that William Moseley's Peter is the weak link of the Pevensie children (Georgie Henley was just amazing yet again). The one thing that really grated, however, was the introduction of a clan of black centaurs; not centaurs that just had darker skin, but ones with dreadlocks and slightly Caribbean accents. I wasn't sure why this annoyed me as I am in no way racist and think that many shows or films really should attempt to present non-white characters, if only for realism's sake than anything else. My issue, then, is when the desire for equality transfers from films which ape reality (SATC:The Movie's inclusion of Carrie's new black assistant, for example) to ones based firmly in fantasy, worlds where the source material makes no such distinction.

Don't get me wrong, I completely understand how race can be used as a device to help audiences. Making the Telmarines appear Mediterranean, for example, means that younger viewers know which side is which. And yet there is surely a risk that children in particular may learn to associate men of such appearance with menace or malcontent; why else would Disney have preserved Jafar's Arabic accent whilst making Aladdin's accent decidedly American? The inclusion of the black centaurs thus seems a clumsy attempt on the film maker's part to break a pattern established in the fantasy films that have come before Prince Caspian.

A couple of examples strike me as particularly relevant for consideration. The Lord of the Rings trilogy uses race in a way that I neglected to notice until my third or fourth viewing. In the final film, for instance, the men riding the great oliphants to battle on the Pelennor fields are clearly dark-skinned, as are the troops marching to the Black Gate in The Two Towers. The use of dark and light is of course a common device; the big black orcs represent evil, it's not rocket science. Race, however, is obviously different to colour, so using black actors as a natural opposition to good, white characters is a transparent and lazy means to an end. Similarly, the late Wi Kuki Kaa, an actor from New Zealand with almost Aboriginal looks, was reportedly cast as the leader of the Wild Men who help the Rohirrim in the third novel. This part of the narrative didn't make it past the pre-production stages, but the point remains; the colour of a man's skin seems to have been at least in part the reason behind his casting. Surely there's something wrong with that. At least the trilogy displays some level of consistency though, matching races with the regions from whence they came. The Narnia films, however, do no such thing. Dwarves in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe seem to be East-Asian, especially those seen at the battle with long, plaited beards and the stereotypically generic Chinese/Japanese complexion. By Prince Caspian, the dwarves are now benevolent, if slightly cynical, creatures who have lost their non-Caucasian appearance. The message, one that is I'm sure not meant by those behind the films, is that good dwarves are white while bad ones are not.

I don't claim to know much about the study of race, but it doesn't take a degree in Edward Said studies to see what is being done in these films. Racial integration has no place in the fantasy genre, and while I'm sure the inclusion of dread locked centaurs seemed like a great idea at the time, it is an ineffective and unnecessary addition to what is shaping up to be an excellent franchise.